One of New York’s most notable civil rights lawyers, who received the title of “People’s Lawyer” because of his advocacy for Black and brown people, died at 77.
On Sunday, April 23, Alton Maddox, Jr. transitioned leaving a legacy of activism that serves as a precursor to the modern-day Black Lives Matter and Until Freedom movement.
The cause of his death is unknown, but family members stated he had been suffering from dementia.
Maddox rose to national acclaim as one of the attorneys representing Tawana Brawley in the late ’80s, the estate of emerging artist and friend of Jean Basquiat, Michael Stewart, who died in police custody in 1983, and Michael Briscoe, one of the members of the Central Park 5 (now the Exonerated 5), the Amsterdam News reports.
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There were many other cases that Maddox carried on his back that placed a spotlight on the racially tense atmosphere of New York City in the 1980s and ’90s.
In 1986, when Cedric Sandiford, one of three Black men hunted and attacked by a mob of white men in Howard Beach, needed counsel, he was the name they called. The same was the case for the family of Michael Griffin, who reached out to Maddox when their loved one was fatally hit by a car in the same Howard Beach area of Brooklyn.
His advocacy helped convict nine people of various charges connected to Griffith’s death
The attorney was born in the all-Black town of Inkster, Michigan, on July 21, 1945. He grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Newnan, Georgia, and graduated from Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1967 at the age of 21.
He would later go on to get a juris doctorate from Boston College in 1971.
Upon becoming a lawyer, he dedicated his life to the liberation of Black people and was unapologetic about his call, and worked hard to help others liberate…
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